[bksvol-discuss] Re: Books rated excellent recently added to the collection that are really only good

  • From: "Cindy Ray" <cindyray@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:26:55 -0500

I do fix things like that.

Cindy Lou Ray. Each day is a new adventure.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "eric troup" <yakkoman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 3:25 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Books rated excellent recently added to 
the collection that are really only good


I suppose you're right, but I have a real hard time not correcting
things like "He begin to notice he was sweating as the lights
dimmed."  I know we're not supposed to fix it, but dammit, that's
supposed to be "began to notice!"  Don't get me wrong, I don't fix
sentence structure or anything intrusive like that, but there are
times when it was clearly an editor's oops, and I do have a hard time
not fixing those.  They jump out at me like muggers on a darkly-lit
street.

On 17 Apr 2008, at 10:31, Lora wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Like you, I don't do a global find and replace, because that can
> result in
> new and interesting errors that need to be fixed later.  But like
> you, when
> I find an error, I do a find, and replace things on a one at a time
> basis.
>
> Yes, we can spell check as we read.  JAWS will announce spelling
> errors.
> You just need to make sure it's not announcing grammar errors, too,
> as that
> can become annoying.  Many novels don't quite pass the grammar
> check, and it
> reports lots of false errors.  Besides, we're not here to correct
> grammar.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Grandma
> Cindy
> Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 9:50 PM
> To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Books rated excellent recently added
> to the
> collection that are really only good
>
> My method is slightly different from yours, though I've thought of
> doing a
> spell-check first. However, I don't. I read the book with the spell-
> check
> on--I don't know if blind people can do that or if it would be too
> annoying.
> I correct as I go, and when I find an incorrect word that us
> actually a real
> word but not the right one, I do a find and replace for others--not
> a global
> replace, though; I've been caught too many times having changed
> things that
> shouldn't have been changed and having to go back and correct them
> and I've
> learned my lesson. When I've finished reading the book, I do a final
> spell-check, and usually I do find a few--very few--words that I've
> missed--and I do a final page-number check.
>
> I don't validate indices or bibliographies, but I don't delete them,
> either.
> I offer to do them later if a reader would like me to.
>
> G.Cindy
>
>
>> Hi Judy and Others,
>>
>> I am always surprised when I download an excellent book and find 
>> that
>> it's definitely not.  Although these books are frustrating
>> discoveries, I think the majority of Excellent books are deserving 
>> of
>> that rating.
>>
>> Getting a book up to that rating is a joint effort, though.  Like
>> you,
>> I appreciate the scanners' comments, explaining the validation 
>> steps
>> that they followed before submitting the book.  It doesn't change 
>> my
>> approach to validating, but it informs me of how much time my
>> validation process is likely to take.
>>
>> For what it's worth, I begin by searching for the number 1, in
>> combinations such as  1 1' 1. 1? And so forth.
>>
>> I then search for random characters that typically don't belong in
>> the
>> book:
>> caret, accent, tilde, percent, pound, and so on.  By finding these
>> and
>> eliminating them, if appropriate, I get an overall glimpse of how
>> much
>> validating needs to be done.
>>
>> Spell-check or not to spell-check:  I then make a determination on
>> whether I'll run the spellchecker.  For most novels and nonfiction, 
>> I
>> will; but for books such as Buddhism in Action, where I'm battling
>> two
>> spelling problems, lots of Hindi words and lots of scanographical
>> errors that resulted in actual words, I've determined that it isn't
>> worth it to run spell check.
>> I'll rely on my full reading of the book to catch errors.
>>
>> I then scan for common scanos, such as die for the and comer for
>> corner.  If I don't find lots of these, I figure it's a good sign.
>>
>> I usually then start reading the book.  Since I'm going to read
>> straight through, this is when I check things like whether all the
>> pages are there, whether lines are missing, whether certain text is
>> garbled, etc.
>>
>> I've found that there are errors that are better caught with 
>> speech,
>> and other errors better caught with Braille.
>>
>> Example:  One excellent book I downloaded might have read all right
>> with Braille, but was a nightmare when I read it with speech.  This
>> was a book I wanted to read, and one I did read, even though there
>> weren't spaces after quotation marks, resulting in things like, "I
>> hate this,"she said.  (Funny thing is, JAWS reads this just fine, 
>> but
>> my Pacmate tried to run this and she together because there was no
>> space.  It did this all through the book, because neither the 
>> scanner
>> or validator went in and put spaces after the quotation marks. 
>> This
>> is the kind of thing we need to find good ways to catch.
>>
>> Finally, if the book has indices or other extras, I make a
>> determination as to whether they can be salvaged.  I think I've 
>> only
>> ever deleted one index, which was very nearly garbled beyond
>> recognition.
>> It was for a very short
>> book, and I felt it didn't add much to the book.
>>
>> As I'm uploading, I review everything that will be visible when the
>> book goes into the collection.  For instance, I check the short and
>> long synopses, title, author, publisher, copyright date, ISBN, and
>> the
>> selected categories and adult rating etc., to make sure it looks
>> good.
>>
>> I'm not saying I won't miss things, but this is the rough process I
>> use.
>>
>> One of my frustrations is when a scanner uploads a book and marks 
>> it
>> as excellent, and then I open the book and it's clearly not.  I
>> downloaded one recently where I found lots of missing words or
>> garbled
>> lines, and I knew I wouldn't be able to correct it easily.  I 
>> simply
>> returned the book to step one, as I figured it'd take more effort 
>> to
>> fix it than I felt I could manage.  I guess I could see how it 
>> might
>> have gotten an excellent rating, as there were good-sized chunks of
>> very readable text, but when it went bad, it was really bad.  I'd
>> appreciate an honest rating.
>> The book probably
>> deserved good, which at least would have warned potential 
>> validators
>> that it would require a fair bit of work.
>>
>> May I ask scanners how they determine whether to rate their
>> submissions as good or excellent?
>>
>> And I'd love to see Bookshare scan the book on initial submission,
>> and
>> offer a potential rating.  Does it do this yet?  I know it's
>> something
>> we've talked about in the past.
>>
>> Finally, I'd love to see a way to leave a comment as to why a
>> validator returned a book to step one.  This could include comments
>> such as: Frequent Hindi words; not familiar enough to validate ... 
>> Or
>> has lots of pictures that will require interpretation by a sighted
>> person ... Or even ... This book has too many errors for me to
>> validate at this time.
>>
>> I hope there's value in some of this.  Mostly, it's just me 
>> thinking
>> publicly.
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Judy s.
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 5:08 PM
>> To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Books rated excellent recently added to 
>> the
>> collection that are really only good
>>
>> Let me add my 'ditto' to the complaints posted here today about 
>> books
>> entering the collection recently that aren't up to snuff.
>>
>> I was just crabbing off-list to Grandma Cindy about this last week.
>> I've downloaded several books this last month that had just entered
>> the collection which had many obvious errors, but were rated
>> excellent.  I've certainly missed stuff myself when validating, 
>> even
>> though I read through every single book I validate, but the errors 
>> I
>> found in downloaded books were things like chapter after chapter 
>> with
>> "1"
>> instead of "I" in the text.
>>
>> As a validator, I appreciate scanners like Shelley and Mayrie (and
>> many
>> others) who put in their comments whether or not they've read the
>> scan
>> through, if they've spell-checked it, stripped headings, verified
>> page
>> numbers and the like.
>>  I'm much more likely to download a book from the step 1 list if 
>> that
>> information is available, because I know what to expect and can 
>> judge
>> how much time I will have to allocate to give that book the 
>> attention
>> it might need.
>>
>> Judy s.
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
>
> ***WISH LIST (CALLED REQUESTED ADDITIONS TO THE BOOKSHARE
> COLLECTION)IS
> AVAILABLE AT 
> http://people.delphiforums.com/jamiecalton/Book_Requests.htm
> http://www.friendsofbookshare.org/
> http://studentpages.alma.edu/~07jmyate/book_requests.htm
>
> A LIST OF BOOKS CURRENTLY BEING SCANNED IS AVAILABLE AT
> http://people.delphiforums.com/jamiecalton/scanning.html
>
> Jake's site for useful links: http://www.jbrownell.com/bkslinks.html
>
>
>
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